Public Internet access has become fairly common in recent years. For example, many retail locations such as cafes, restaurants, book stores, electronics retailers, and the like have begun offering free Wi-Fi hotspots that allow their customers to access the Internet using the retailer's network. The reasons for offering Internet access to customers may be different for different types of retailers. In the case of cafes and restaurants, for example, free Internet access may be a way to draw customers in to their location, or to keep the customers there once they have arrived. In such an example, the retailers may expect that the more people present at their location for a longer period of time, the more products or services those people will purchase at the location. In the case of electronics retailers, for example, the products that the retailers are offering may have certain features that use the Internet, and by allowing access to the Internet, the customers are provided an opportunity to test those features while they are in the store and before buying the product.
The number and types of devices that are being used to access the Internet at locations offering public Internet access is constantly increasing. In the past, a relatively small number of people carried devices that could connect to Wi-Fi access points because those devices were typically larger and/or less capable than the devices that are presently available. Today, smaller and more capable devices are available, allowing many people to carry one or more Wi-Fi enabled devices (e.g., smart phones, laptop computers, tablets, netbooks, e-book readers, etc.) almost everywhere they go.
This increase in the devices requesting access to the Internet places a burden on the retailers and other public Internet access providers because there is only a finite amount of bandwidth that can be distributed amongst all of the provider's customers. This burden is often compounded by certain users who choose to abuse the public Internet access—e.g., by “squatting” at the hotspot location for inappropriately long periods of time and/or using bandwidth-intensive network applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing programs, video streaming applications, and the like. This type of abusive behavior can potentially lead to a loss of business for the public Internet access provider because the squatters take up physical space that may otherwise be used by other customers. Furthermore, the network may be overloaded by the use of bandwidth-intensive network applications such that other customers have less bandwidth available for the Internet uses that were intended by the provider.